- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- plex@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- plex@lemmy.ml
We are also changing how remote playback works for streaming personal media (that is, playback when not on the same local network as the server). The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience, and as a result, we will no longer offer remote playback as a free feature. This—alongside the new Plex Pass pricing—will help provide those resources. This change will apply to the future release of our new Plex experience for mobile and other platforms.
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I’m surprised by the resistance to Jellyfin in this thread. If you are using Plex, you’re already savvy enough to use bittorrent and probably the *arrs. If you can configure that stuff, Jellyfin is absolutely something you can handle. If you like Docker, there’s good projects out there. If you’re like me and you don’t understand Docker, use Swizzin community edition. If you can install Ubuntu or Debian, and run the Swizzin script, you’re in business.
The big thing for me with plex is user management. I am absolutely knowledgeable enough to set up jellyfin, but i dont want to deal with user management. Plex makes it easy, i tell them to make their own account and i just share my library. i dont have to reset passwords, they can do that themselves. However, it’s getting to the point where i will probably just switch to jellyfin and deal with it because of how bad plex is getting.
I’m only sharing access with a few friends and family, so I don’t find it cumbersome. Usually I make their account using the Jellyfin app on my phone. I do sympathize with not wanting to do support, which is the main reason I don’t even ask for help with the hosting costs. I don’t want to feel any obligation.
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I think I represent a huge portion of Plex users; I am tech savvy enough to follow a simple walkthrough on YouTube to get my server setup. But the arrs, jellyfin, and docker both look like graduate level chemistry to me.
Plex has been around for ages and they have put money into making things easier for users like me to understand with events such as Pro Week and directly paying content creators to dumb things down for me.
I’ve got to admit that I’ve never used Plex (I’m a cantankerous open software fanatic), but how do you get your media on there? You’re hosting your own server so presumably you’re downloading the media somehow. Are you doing it manually? If so, you can do the same with Jellyfin. Is it automated with some tool built into Plex?
It’s quite easy without docker to get lots of it running with a dietpi install. Runs on rpi and alike, but also on any “normal” old low end pc. Just select jellyfin, arrs, … It handles it all for you, no need to learn Docker (I know people will argue about the advantages of docker, which are valid points, but ease of installation is more important to many people). The only difficulty remains the streaming outside your own LAN (because it’s risky). VPN, tailscale, … there’s options but it always keeps on feeling risky to open up outside LAN. Local setup for jellyfin can be really really easy tho, if it’s just for yourself and you mostly watch at home anyway… And in some jellyfin compatible app like Finamp and Streamyfin you can just download a few music albums, episodes or movies to your phone before you travel…
Me too. Docker isn’t hard if you use a compose file. It’s easy to read syntax.
Linux server.io has great documentation for their images.
I have Jellyfin and Plex running from the same virtual machine pointing at the same media. If it wasn’t for the one crappy TV I have in my house with no Jellyfin client, Plex would be gone.
Docker isn’t hard if you use a compose file. It’s easy to read syntax.
This is giving me “yaml isn’t hard to use if you use a compose file!” It is, actually. It’s easy for you because you understand the technology. The vast majority of people do not.
Of course. But if you managed to setup Plex then you’ve already shown you have willing to learn…
Alas my TV (LG WebOS 2) doesn’t have an application for Jellyfin, or I’d have switched years ago :-(
Is there an emby app available or Kodi? The base of Jellyfin should work in either. Plug and play as far as I’m aware with maybe some issues for certain versions.
Before now I was on the sunk cost fallacy of not wanting to teach my extended family how to use Jellyfin instead of plex but after this I’m already mid-way through setting up a Jellyfin docker container on my server and I only found out an hour ago
I’ve been testing out jellyfin for the last couple months but it doesn’t really fill the void of this specific feature that’s being locked behind a pay wall. If anyone has good recommendations for securely and reliably hosting jellyfin behind SSL and auth with email password resets where I don’t have to worry about it as much as Plex.
I use jellyfin locally but for a handful of remote clients I have I may well block off their access they’re not going to be able to figure out my hand spun services and wall of text.
Jellyfin is still way behind Plex in general performance but I keep a VM of it running and updated, for when the day comes that Plex is absolutely worthless.
Which at this rate, is, well, we’re getting there.
Jellyfin depends on proprietary Microsoft .NET, even on Linux.
It’s still better than Plex and Emby, which are fully proprietary, and have no source code. But I will stick with sshfs with kodi, and nginx plus mpv for now.
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Ease of setup was how I just got one techie friend and two non-techie gamer friends to set up Plex servers and we had libraries shared to each other within 15-30 minutes. I don’t want to think about explaining VPNs and SSL to them for the alternatives.
Hellooooo jellyfin!
Only use open source software
They do not have chromecast support. (Atleat the last time i checked) Thats a deal breaker for me, would love to use it.
… I’m using Chromecast and Google TV, though Chromecast isn’t very good, really, and Google TV stared showing commercials every now and then since a while ago, so that too will be on its way out.
But yeah, they’re supported
I run Jellyfin on Chromecast with Google TV every day, it works super well.
Unless you mean casting from your phone, then I don’t know.
I will check it out!
IIRC it has it. Not if you’re behind VPN or a tunnel. Only over HTTPS.
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Yes, it does introduce insecurity, so not for everyone. I have it behind a domain on cloudflare (let’s encrypt cert) with nginx reverse proxy
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Yes, it took me a long time to figure it out. Which is why Plex feels comfortable charging for it
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Hmm i need to revisit it again. Thanks!
I just confirmed it has it. You need to be on the same subnet, which is why VPN won’t work. But then everything shows up as castable
I used to use Plex, then one day my internet was down and since Plex couldn’t phone home, it wouldn’t let me log in to watch media ON MY LAN.
So yeah it’s inherently broken. That’s before you even consider the licensing.
i’m not sure why it would do this, i’ve never had any issues with watching plex while the internet is down (in fact that was one of my original uses for it, to have movies and tv in a building without internet). I don’t have it turned on but I do know you can go into server settings -> network and set a list of IPs/subnets that can access without any authorization at all. That lets you use plex without even having a plex account afaik.
It has to do with the app used. I think it will work with web player and maybe the windows app, but it won’t work on Android/iOS.
oh okay, interesting. well, you could always use the web browser on your phone/ipad i guess. not a great experience but i know for a fact that plex works on ios in chrome at the very least.
This is provably what I would have needed. But since I couldn’t log in, I couldn’t do anything.
I can watch it without Internet
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jellyfin + tailscale is all you need. It’s so damn good and easy
tailscale changed the computing experience for me in everything I do. Amazing networking solution. I also use zerotier but find myself on tailscale more due to how many devices they offer.
How do you set up HTTPS? I would like to encrypt the communication between my tailscale devices and my homeserver. Is it just a matter of using Let’s Encrypt with Nginx?
Tailscale is based on the wireguard protocol, which has already very strong encryption
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This might be a dumb question, but could I access my Jellyfin through an external VPN like Proton?
I have it set up in my raspberry to download Linux ISOs and run Jellyfin
I’m not pirating a bunch of shows just to pay Plex for the privilege of watching it.
Also remember to give them your credit card, name and address for the privilege of pirating the content.
Even better, it’s now a nice database of who companies and governments can go after when they want or need to!
It always has been… just now they want you to pay.
Jellyfin ftw
Can’t say I have a huge issue with this - Plex isn’t FOSS and the infrastructure to make this happen isn’t free. Other options are available if you don’t want to pay the fee.
But what infrastructure does this feature require? I’m direct connecting to my own personal server with perhaps credential handling and a handshake handled by Plex servers to connect. None of the media is passing through their servers - or it shouldn’t be if it is.
In a nutshell, if your app isn’t able to make a direct connection to your Plex Media Server when you’re away from home, we can act as sort of a middle man and “relay” the stream from your server to your app. To accomplish this, your Plex Media Server establishes a secure connection to one of our Relay servers. Your app then also connects securely to the same Relay server and accesses the stream from your Plex Media Server. (In technical terms, the content is tunneled through.)
So, your Plex Media Server basically “relays” the media stream through our server so that your app can access it since the app can’t connect with your server directly.
Source: https://support.plex.tv/articles/216766168-accessing-a-server-through-relay/
It’s not a requirement to stream and it’s sort of dumb they are lumping this relay service as a part of the remote streaming. Remote streaming should be allowed for free - if you are not a subscriber. The relay should just be a paid service, which makes sense. But if it’s a direct connection to my server, it should be free.
That being said, I understand how Plex may have built some technical debt into this relay system. It might be hard for them to decouple the relay from the remote streaming. What they should have done is:
We are removing the relay service as a free service, but you can still do remote streaming with a direct connection.
And they should have built their architecture in a way that’s easy to decouple the two services.
Thanks for that - I wasn’t aware of the relay service, but completely agree that this is what they should be charging for and not the remote play feature in its entirety. I’ll probably drag it out for a while by refusing to update the app and server… Might be able to make it work with Tailscale as others have suggested.
In the past I’ve paid for a month or two when I wanted to download to my devices remotely (and I think that’s the singular feature that I’ve ever cared about in the Plex pass). But to take features away and then try and charge me for them is a bridge too far, I can’t support that bad behavior.
I paid for the lifetime membership ~6 years ago so I’m going to stick with it. Plus I just use it for my own home. It’s not like I’m serving a bunch of other clients. But I’ll switch to Jellyfin if the lifetime membership ever gets taken away.
I considered it when they warned about the increase and offered it at $75, but I just didn’t have the money to spend back then. Felt pretty stupid for not doing it, but I don’t even know what paid features they offer, and I’m clearly not missing them.
99% of my usage is at home as well, so this is unlikely to affect me - until that random 1% anyhow.
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Wireguard so you are always seen as being on the local network. This bit of assholery is easily defeated.
Another company fucked by executives.
Judging by the rest of the thread I’m going to get downvoted for this, but what the hell:
I’m sure I’ll switch to Jellyfin eventually but I tried it out a few weeks ago to see what all the hype was about and it just… wasn’t great. It was difficult to setup, with way too many overly-complicated settings, and then it refused to play one of the two test files I tried. Like it or not there’s a reason that Plex is the dominant player in the game, and a large part of that reason is that it verges on plug-and-play for simplicity of both setup and use.
Yes, it sucks that they’re removing remote streaming for free users, but I imagine there’s a significant chunk of users who don’t know or care how to properly open their server up to the world and are relying on the Plex proxies for their streams (which happens entirely in the background), and those aren’t going to be cheap to run. Maybe putting them behind a paywall will provide the resources to make them faster.
I did buy a lifetime pass last time they announced a price hike; it’s honestly paid for itself many times over, and I’ve been encouraging other users I know to do the same before this next one, because yes, it is a significant hike this time around. That said, while I wouldn’t pay monthly for it, I do still feel like the lifetime pass is tremendous value for such a polished product. It’s a shame they’ve had to do it at all, but I don’t begrudge them for it.
I imagine there’s a significant chunk of users who don’t know or care how to properly open their server up to the world and are relying on the Plex proxies
That seems like the obvious place to put a subscription that won’t get people upset. Or maybe it’s in the presentation.
When HomeAssistant started a subscription, they renewed their commitment to opensource, added new remote features with obvious costs under subscription while still letting you do it yourself, plus made it clear this funded continued opensource development. I happily pay this and haven’t been disappointed. Did Plex fumble a similar opportunity?
That’s how I’m feeling about all these “TImE FoR evErYoNE tO swITCh To JElLyfiN” comments. You mean the program that also doesn’t support this functionality out of the box?
Exactly. I’d love to use jellyfin, but it’s just not feasible
I have a lifetime Plex account but have not used it in two years. I use Jellyfin. Obviously opinions vary.
At home, I have FireTV and Roku devices. I stream remotely to iPhones and tablets using Twingate.
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This is what people don’t realize. If you want something good, you have to pay people for their time and talent. Free products that are free because of ideology are just exploitation with extra steps.
That’s a good reason for people to take the money they would have spent buying a proprietary solution and instead donate that money to an open source project. For me it’s not always about the cost, but what I get out of it. I’d rather the money go to the community and better it.
The problem is people don’t put their money where their mouth is. Even less in the scale needed to produce a product of the quality te average person expects. You see this again and again. It’s very nice to think it works, but it doesn’t. A random guy saying “actchually I donated 1 Monero” doesn’t mean a project is financially sustainable.
You’re right. Unfortunately, open-source has proven time and time again to be unsustainable and burn maintainers out
I have a lifetime plex pass so this does not really affect me but I expect the trend of degrading experience to continue. I would have switched to Jellyfin a long time ago but I am dreading contacting everyone I share with and getting them migrated.
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You can use Cloudflare Tunnel as well.
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Everything I see online says it’s free.
I’ve also used it recently and did not pay for it.
It’s against CloudFlare ToS to use CF tunnels for media streaming like this. You can risk it ig but I have important stuff like domain registrations on CloudFlare so I’m personally not willing to risk getting banned.
I have not used it for streaming, but you’re right. I purposely do not proxy my media traffic for this reason, utilizing their other solutions.
I already pay for plex pass but I’m going to start looking into jelly fin out of principle. I will not support the enshitification of a service I use and this is how it starts. Soon they will have tiered subscriptions and then the cheap one will be taken away and the cheapest paid one will be stuffed with ads then all tiers will be stuffed with ads then they will jack up prices again or charge more for sharing with family or block it all together to force your family to get their own sub and the circle of enshitification will be complete.
If you don’t like the price there’s always jellyfin.
Got to say that I have been very happy with it.
Yeah I switched 2-3 years ago because so many features were paywalled and on jellyfin I can at least use plugins
I switched when I had an internet outage and couldn’t log into Plex locally to watch my own media. Very happy with Jellyfin since then.
Does Jellyfin do remote streaming?
Yes. You’ll have to set up a reverse proxy, I use nginx, and get yourself domain, I use duck DNS, and get a SSL certificate from let’s encrypt if your wanting to steam to something like a Chromecast or Roku.
It’s not all that hard honestly and there’s a good guide here for general home media, including both Plex and jellyfin
Assuming you know them well enough, can’t you just give your IP address to folks and forward the port on your router?
Or just use tailscale. Much easier.
Yes
Here’s the thing though, for the average plex user (myself included) you’ve already used too many acronyms and words I don’t understand. Plex serves a purpose for a lot of people, people who are even willing to pay for it to be easy.
Kind of reminds me of Netflix before anyone else did streaming. They had so much stuff I stopped sailing.
Yep. Imo now with Plex you are paying for a much simpler and accessible setup. Seems fair enough to me. Lemmy FOSS or die users (every else in this thread seemingly) are not the target audience of Plex but they sure love to complain about it.
I try to use Foss but only when it’s a lateral move. I tried Linux mint. It came close but there were so many little things that just didn’t make sense to me as someone who used windows for the last 25 years. Do I want to use Windows 11? No, especially with everything they’ve been doing to it. But in terms of usability, the sacrifices that I make by using Windows 11 outweigh the extra work, frustration, and time spent trying to figure out Linux (tried 3 different distros too).
I have 3 little kids, a full time job and aging parents. I don’t have hours every day to try and make stuff work.
Well that sucks.
Yeah, welcome to the easy, fast, cheap conundrum.
If you’re willing to do a bit of learning and asking the community for help if you get a little stuck, you’ve got a free solution, if not, which is perfectly okay mind you, then Plex is your solution and you have to decide how much you’re willing to pay.
And honestly, of you’re going down the home media route with friend and family, you’re going to want to set up sonarr, radarr, ombi, transmission with VPN anyways.
I’m going to be going the free solution route, been trying to find a cheap laptop to turn into my server right now. Do you mind if I reach out about it or do you know of any good instances?
Yeah, I have a docker compose yaml script you can baseline of off and help walk you through with my lessons learned.
Just put it behind tailscale and use the IP. Doing this for a two years now with weekly anime watch togethers with my friends. Not elegant but enough.
With the caviat that you have tailscale enabled on both devices. This prevents it from being used on a roku outside your home but you could access it remotely from your computer/phone/tablet.
It is significantly harder than Plex, currently. There are improvements happening all the time though.
You very much can create an external port and access anywhere without any of this. No tailscale needed but I’d recommend one knows what they are doing…
Hmmm, i use a Synology NAS with Jellyfin installed and my family can use their Roku TVs without issue. I didn’t realize Synology made a difference there
It totally depends on how you expose it to the outside world. If it’s exposed just like it is, it works fine with every device. If you put an authentication before it (e.g. Authelia), it can only be accessed by browsers from outside the network. That being said, it’s not recommended to expose Jellyfin directly, because there are a ton of security flaws. Best practice is to use a VPN
Well I’m a Luddite so I’m probably exposing myself to miners or something
Better than exposing yourself to minors
I do this too but it only works on my home network not remotely.
Huh? I’m streaming from my Jellyfin just fine when I’m on the go, with no tailscale or other VPN set up
It was significantly harder to set up remote access for Jellyfin than Plex 6 months ago. I ha ent attempted since. With Plex there was literally no set up, it just works. Until it just works without having to do any extra work, Jellyfin will struggle with adoption.
I have both running, and thatd a big difference to me. Also I prefer the way Plex detects intros and credits for skipping and their detection for captions. Once that’s all sorted Jellyfin wins in every field.
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It works, but isn’t nearly as user friendly.
does jellyfin have a roku app?
Yes, it streams pretty well, it has some UX issues, but it will let you get off plex as it stands right now with most of your needs covered.
Yes. I use mine daily and it works great
This is the best ad campaign Jellyfin could have asked for.
